Old Movies Review Post

My comics showed up yesterday! Whoo! I'm going to start reviewing them. . . two days from now. I've waited six weeks, what's two more days?

In other news, I watched The Maltese Falcon last night. Humphrey Bogart has a very good unfriendly smile. He mostly directs it at O'Shaughnessy when she's feeding him a line, but it's quite frightening.

That's not a movie I planned to discuss originally, so let's move on. Sometime over the weekend, Dad and I watched Rope of Sand with Burt Lancaster. It also has Claude Rains as the (mostly) unscrupulous diamond magnate, so you know there's a certain level of skill in it. I say "mostly", I was a little disappointed by that. Rains character is a bit like his character from Casablanca, where he's crooked, pragmatic, but there's a core of idealism or decency in there as well. It's much the same way here, but I kind of wish he'd simply be an outright scumbag. I suppose Paul Henreid as Commander Vogel had that role filled. Vogel is more of a thug with big aspirations. The kind of guy who, because he buys expensive art and shows it off, thinks/hopes the high society types will actually accept him as one of their own someday.

The story goes that two years ago Burt Lancaster was a guide in Africa who had a client go charging off into a privately owned area where diamonds are mined. Lancaster followed and brought him back, trying to save him. Instead he was found by Vogel's men and tortured by Vogel (who believed Lancaster must have taken diamonds and hid them). It leads to a situation where Lancaster, who never cared about the diamonds before, refused to talk and has returned to get the diamonds his client had found, mostly just to rub Vogel's nose in it. Rains, who is part owner of the property and therefore wants those diamonds too, sends a young extortionist named Suzanne into the fray to trick the location out of Lancaster. Of course they really fall for each other, but there are trust issues, etc. Hmm, it's really starting to sound like Casablanca now. Assuming you can find it in an appropriate format, it's worth a viewing.

Bad Day at Black Rock is part of a "Controversial Film" collection my dad picked up some time ago, along with The Americanization of Emily, and 5 other movies which escape me at the moment. I'm guessing Bad Day was controversial because it directly references anti-Japanese sentiment during WW2 as well as the interment camps. That's all I can figure anyway.

John Macreedy (Spencer Tracy, who is much shorter than I thought he'd be) shows up at Black Rock looking for Adobe Flats, but getting nothing but grief from the locals. They tell him their hotel is full, and when he does try and get a room, Lee Marvin (who's always drunk and violent. Well, violent anyway) barges in and says it's his, so Macreedy will have to move. Which he does. He tries to rent a car and meets resistance, though Liz (Anne Francis) lets him borrow her jeep. At which point Ernest Borgnine tries to kill him, under Robert Ryan's orders. See, the townspeople have a secret they'd very much like to keep a secret, and it just so happens to relate to why Macreedy's in town. He's not there specifically to uncover this, but to do what he came there to do, he's going to uncover it anyway.

This is a movie that understands build-up. Everyone in town keeps giving Macreedy the runaround, or trying to make life difficult. Making cracks about Macreedy's missing arm, whatever. Yet Macreedy doesn't lose his temper. He rolls with everything, just smiles and walks away. Which riles those guys (especially Borgnine) up. The whole time, you know something's going to happen, so when it does, it's a great moment.

I don't know if this is accurate or not, but in fiction, I have this impression that small towns are usual dangerous for newcomers in their insularity, while cities are dangerous in their anonymity. In a small town, everyone knows each other, knows their secrets, and doesn't trust new people because they don't know them or their secrets. With cities, the newcomer is just a face in the crowd. No one knows or cares who they are, so anything can happen to them it won't matter in the big scheme of things. Just a thought.

I'd recommend watching this one more than Rope of Sand. It isn't too heavy-handed about how wrong the anti-Japanese-American sentiments were, and it's a well done film. Also, Walter Brennan's it, which is usually a good thing.